A Bit Of An Anticlimax
by Oi-Watch-It-Spaceman
Summary: The Doctor and Rose are travelling the world on an adventure, but things take a turn for the worst. This might be the end, and they both decide there is one experience they need to have before they die. [No character death, I swear]


**Written for the Proposal-a-thon at couldispenditwithyou on tumblr. **

It had been Rose's idea. A trip to the desert, somewhere they had never been to before, even in the other universe. Their last holiday – they were forced to call them holidays when in company because apparently "normal people" didn't go on "adventures" – had been the Doctor's choice, and they had gone somewhere very cold and very icy and very filled with polar bears that wanted to eat them. Well, maybe not filled, but they had ended up in one of the only places that seemed to be teeming with predators, and had escaped by the skin of their teeth.

Rose decided that this time they should go somewhere hot. It wasn't space or time travel, but seeing as much as they could of the planet they were on seemed like an exciting piece of their new life. A slightly different life than either of them had been expecting, but a good one.

That is, it was good when it wasn't going drastically wrong.

They had planned a drive across the desert in their jeep, from one city to another in order to see sand stretching as far as the eye could see. They had plenty of food and water, because the drive would take them all day, but it was the journey that mattered to them so they didn't mind spending it in the car. If only it had all gone as they planned.

The jeep had conked out, and even the Doctor's superior skills could not coax it back to life again. Sand in the engine, fuel leakage and rust had apparently taken their toll on the vehicle, and Rose slumped in the driver's seat as the Doctor opened the passenger door.

"I'll have to call for help," he said, sounding very down. Rose knew how much it annoyed him not to be able to fix something as trivial as a broken car himself, so she did not choose that moment to tease him. He was still smarting from the loss of his sonic screwdriver, his favourite tool that he had not been able to replicate. It was just over a year and a half after they had been left here, and it still frustrated him that he could not fix everything as easily as he used to be able to.

Rose stayed inside the car while the Doctor got out to make the phone call to her dad – he was their best chance at being picked up quickly and without a lot of fuss. The Doctor could not sit still in situations like these – never had been able to – and she thought that it was probably best to give him a moment alone to pace and bounce around and he generally anxious and frazzled. However, seeing him shouting and frowning and jabbing at the phone furiously had not been what she was expecting. It appeared that he had been cut off.

The trip was swiftly turning into a nightmare. Rose climbed quickly out of the boiling hot car, slamming the door and running around the other to side to face the Doctor in near despair. "Please tell me you managed to get a message through to my dad before it cut out?" The word "dad" still tasted slightly foreign on her tongue, but it felt right nonetheless.

The Doctor sighed. "I did manage to get in contact with Pete, but I couldn't give full co-ordinates. I never told him exactly where we were going, they'll only be able to trace the call to within a few hundred miles or so, they'll have to search by sight from there."

"So we wait?"

"So we wait." The Doctor nodded, before slumping down on the sand in defeat. Rose knew he hated waiting, and she wasn't that fond of it herself. Still, waiting was preferable to thinking about the dwindling supply of water that they had in the jeep.

"Well, it could be worse," she said cheerfully, sitting down beside him. The Doctor gave her a look that clearly said a) he knew she was putting on a brave face, and b) that it wasn't helping. "We could be being attacked by aliens with nothing to defend ourselves with but a tank of water and your razor sharp wit."

He looked affronted. "Oi, there's no need to get nasty. I could just as well say that we could use your ridiculous optimism as a way to ward off predators." Rose grinned and began to laugh, while the Doctor attempted to keep the serious expression on his face for more than a couple of seconds. Needless to say he failed miserably.

They chatted their way through the next couple of hours, sitting in the shade of the jeep and barely noticing the ridiculous heat. Night began to fall, and all of a sudden the temperature was dropping. Plummeting might have been a more accurate way to describe it. They huddled inside the jeep, cuddled up to each other for warmth and wearing every scrap of clothing they had on them. Because they had been planning to be back before nightfall, they had not packed any particularly warm clothes, nor did they have much food or water. The situation was most definitely, according to the Doctor, "less than perfect."

The next day passed without any sign of help from Pete or anyone else, and Rose was finding it hard not give up hope. Optimist or not, it was hard to keep a cheery disposition when the proof of their situation was stretched all around them as far as the human eye could see. The next time they adventured (if there was a next time) they would be somewhere reasonably populated, with spare phones and extra water and all sorts of essentials that would avoid this type of situation. When they had been aboard the TARDIS they had mostly had to avoid gunfire, the detonation of explosive devices or the plans of alien races who meant to cause some sort of harm to other alien races. Starvation and dehydration had never been enemies of theirs – the TARDIS provided for them.

Rose talked the Doctor through her thoughts on their future safety, and they laughed about how exactly they were going to carry all of the things she was suggesting. The Doctor had yet to replicate the bigger-on-the-inside technology of his now extinct people – he was working on it in the spare bedroom of their flat (previously his bedroom in the time before he and Rose had made that leap in their relationship.)Torchwood leant him any equipment he might need for his experiments, quite kind of them considering that he would not set foot in the place unless he could help it. To Rose Torchwood meant hope and work and a way to find the Doctor, but to the Doctor it simply meant pain and loss and reminders of a time that he would rather forget.

No matter how pleasant their conversation about how many bottles of water the Doctor could fit in his suit pockets ("Come one, Rose, I could do 12 easily!"), they could not ignore the fact that time was running out, just like their water supply had that morning. The second night passed slowly, and Rose could not stop herself from crying a little as her mind strayed to the possibility of them not being found. She clutched the Doctor's t-shirt and he pulled her close to him, breathing in her familiar smell. With his eyes closed and all his other senses overcome with Rose, he could forget, for a moment, the very real danger that they were in. He could feel Rose's tears through his shirt, and cursed himself for being unable to think of a way to save them. He was the Doctor. Being stuck on Earth in the middle of a desert without any tools or help was not supposed to faze him. And yet there was nothing he could do.

The next day and night were a blur. They did not talk that much, for there wasn't really much to say at that point. Hope was draining away fast, and neither of them wanted to admit it to the other.

The morning after that they awoke early (to be honest, neither of them had slept more than an hour or so) and sat side by side on the cold sand, revelling in the cool air around them that they knew was not going to last long.

"Do you think this is it?" Rose asked quietly.

"Of course not," the Doctor replied immediately, "it'll be fine, we'll-"

"No Doctor, really." She stopped him in his tracks and looked into his eyes. "This might be it for us – you can't keep pretending that we'll be alright and back to normal in the next 24 hours, because there is a real possibility that it won't happen."

The Doctor shifted, one hand holding hers while watching the other as he trailed the cold sand through his fingertips.

"If these are going to be our last few hours – and they might be, because there's no more water – then I want us to just be as happy as we can be, alright?" Her eyes were sparkling with tears but she managed to hold her resolve, lips pursed with determination as she awaited his reply.

After a few seconds she began to wonder if he had heard her.

"Alright then," he said suddenly, making Rose jump. "Alright then, OK, right." She was worried, to say the least. Dehydration must have been getting to him by this point, because he was looking very dazed and his eyes were unfocused and he kept repeating those words, searching his pockets at the same time.

Whatever he was looking for he must have found, because the next second his hand was closed around something and he was facing her, eyes shining.

"OK Rose, so we might not have long left and I've been carrying this around in my pocket for a few weeks now and I just... you should have it." He spread his fingers and held out his hand towards her, and Rose saw the small ring box, simple and blue and sitting there calmly on his palm, waiting to be opened.

She could feel tears creeping into her eyes, and found herself surprised that she had enough moisture left in her body to conjure them. The Doctor handed the box to her, placing it in her hand, but she stopped him before he opened the lid.

"Just a second," she said quietly, holding up a finger before delving into her pockets. They were not bigger on the inside like the Doctor's used to be, but that did not mean that they were not completely full up with various bits of rubbish. Eventually Rose removed a small, blue box, not unlike the one she was still holding in her left hand. She pushed it into the Doctor's hands with trembling fingers.

The Doctor looked down at the box, then up at Rose, then down again, and though he were watching a game of Anti-Gravity Tennis (a sport which he maintained existed, despite Rose's scepticism about the whole thing.) "Well, it was just so perfect for you – and I know you, I know it could take you forever to get around to actually doing this, so I decided to do it myself. Apparently I'm not so good at this stuff either, 'cause that's been in my pocket for about a month now."

He grinned, and held her gaze for a second before sniffing, attempting to keep what remained of his cool. "On three, then," he said, and she nodded. "One, two, three."

They both opened the boxes, and there was a moment of silence between them as they took in what lay inside.

Rose's was delicate and beautiful, two strands of silver twirling elegantly around each other seamlessly. She picked it up, and immediately she could tell that it was not fragile. She could feel the strength in the metal, the durability that it somehow had while still managing to appear light as a cloud and 100 times more beautiful.

"Doctor," she breathed, "it's... wow."

"Good wow?" he asked anxiously.

"Definitely a good wow." Rose smiled across at him, though he was no longer focussed on her, looking instead at the ring he now held in his hand. Rose might not have planned to get a ring for him and propose herself, had she not seen this one just by chance. She had known in that instant that, when they made that commitment to each other (not that they weren't already as committed as anyone) she wanted that ring to be the one that she placed on his finger.

It rested there in the box, the ring that she had chosen for him, smooth and gleaming and completely and utterly blue. It was, in fact, just about the exact same shade of blue of the TARDIS exterior.

"It reminded me of... well, I guess you can figure it out." Rose watched the different emotions flickering across his face and hoped desperately that he liked it.

He said nothing for a few moments, and when he looked up at Rose he was grinning from ear to ear. "Rose... it's blue! How did you even find it? It's brilliant! It's just the right colour."

Rose was smiling now. She gently removed the ring from its little cushion and grabbed the Doctor's left hand with hers. "Do you, the Doctor, want to marry me?"

He looked a bit stunned, but that beaming smile didn't leave his face when he replied. "Yep."

"'I do' is traditional, but yep is good enough for me." Rose slid the ring onto his finger. She had known it would fit – she had measured it while he had been sleeping. He sleep habits were a lot more regular and his sleep a lot deeper than it had been when he had been a full Time Lord.

The Doctor quickly grabbed hold of her hand and gently took the ring that he had chosen from her. "Do you, Rose Tyler, want to marry me?"

Rose looked at his face, hope and love and desperation all mixed up together. "Yep." He smiled at her as he placed the ring on her finger. In unison they both stuck out their hands and admired their new jewellery.

"That was a little bit anticlimactic, wouldn't you say?"

The Doctor shrugged, eyebrows pulling together in the middle. "I think it was perfect." He suddenly pulled Rose into a hug, causing her to gasp in shock. She could feel how tightly his hands were gripping her, how his face was pressed into her shoulder, how his heart was pounding almost in time with hers. He was scared.

Rose pulled away and looked him deeply in the eyes. They were both scared, but that didn't mean that she was going to let it defeat her. "You're my husband now," she whispered happily, tears in her eyes once more.

He took a second before responding in a low voice that would have made her shiver with anticipation were she not so tired and, now, slightly dizzy. "And you're my wife."

Rose grasped his hand in hers. "Forever, yeah?"

The Doctor looked so, so sad and his eyes were so full of love and Rose had to stop herself from breaking down completely. "Forever," he said firmly, squeezing her hand tight and not letting go.

Pete found them a few hours later, passed out next to the jeep which was thankfully still casting a shadow over them, hands clasped tightly together. He watched as the medical team put them on stretchers and lifted them up into the zeppelin, heart thumping as he desperately hoped they would be OK. A few years ago he would never have expected to have a child, let alone a son, a daughter and (almost) a son-in-law, but it was only now that he realised how much Rose and the Doctor meant to him. The Doctor had done some amazing things, he knew, but seeing him stretched out motionless on the ground with Rose next to him, barely breathing, Pete realised how fragile they both were.

He issued commands and made checks and shouted a lot and was generally quite irritable on the journey back. He also made frequent trips to the medical room to check on the two idiots who had almost caused him a heart attack with their gallivanting around the world like they were indestructible. As it turned out, they were going to be OK. Pete breathed out a sigh of relief before phoning Jackie. As he had predicted, she shouted then cried and told him in no uncertain terms that she was going to wring both their necks when they got back home. Pete hoped that he could avoid the neck wringing, considering that it was him who had found them and saved their lives. Well, him and the police and the medical team, but still.

Pete sat on a chair in between their beds, wondering which one was going to wake up first, when he noticed something glinting on the Doctor's finger. He stood up and looked more closely. It looked like a... but it couldn't be. They weren't married. He immediately checked for a band on Rose's left hand, and found a ring on the fourth finger. He was stumped. They had definitely not been married before they left. He knew because he had had an extremely drunk conversation with the Doctor, in which the poor half Time Lord had poured out his worries about asking Rose to marry him – the principle one being rejection and living life alone. The alcohol had not helped his melancholy state, and Pete was sure that he probably remembered just about none of their little chat, but still. It was proof that they had not been married before the trip. So had they just decided to do it on a whim?

He was just about to sit back down when he noticed Rose stirring. He slipped quickly to her side and watched as she opened her eyes and tried to blink away the haze of sleep.

"I should warn you," Pete said, slowly and clearly so that even half asleep she would be able to understand, "that despite everything else that you have put us through in the past couple of days, the thing that will most likely make your mother lose it is the idea that her daughter got married and did not invite her own mum. Care to offer an explanation?"

Rose shifted up onto her elbows and looked down at her hand. Seeing the sparkle on her finger, her eyes widened with realisation and she looked around desperately. "Where's the Doctor? Is he OK? Oh my god, Dad, I think I passed out, did you find him?"

"Shh, it's OK. He's right next to you, he's fine – though he won't be for long if your mum finds out that you two got married without her."

Rose's breathing slowed considerably when she saw the peacefully sleeping Doctor to her right hand side, and she managed to tear her eyes away from him and face the accusations being put to her. "No, we're not married. Not properly. It's just... we thought you weren't going to find us, and it turned out we'd both been waiting for the right time to ask so we just thought... we should do it, because neither of us wanted to die without—"

She stuttered, and suddenly the truth of the situation came rushing down on her like a tonne of bricks. The fact that they had nearly died, the words that had been spoken, the swapping of rings as a last act of love. Pete pulled her close as she shuddered through her sobs, and only when she had calmed down and was sniffling gently did her pull away and look her in the eyes.

"You scared the crap out of us but you're both fine, you're safe now and you'll have the chance to get married for real. He's been worrying about it for months, you know – consider this experience an extremely severe kick up the arse to the pair of you. Just get on with it, you haven't got forever."

Pete's words resonated somewhere inside Rose, and she could hear her own voice promising the Doctor forever, or as much as she could give him of that forever. They were idiots, the pair of them. They wanted to seize the day and live the best life, but they were cowards when it came to the stuff that they really truly wanted.

"What's... what's going on?" A slurring and confused voice came drifting to them from the next bed. "Rose? Rose?!

"She's right here," Pete said hurriedly, "you need to calm down, the pair of you, or I'll have you both sedated. You're recovering from severe dehydration, don't do anything stupid." He sounded stern, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

The Doctor managed to catch sight of Rose and Pete watched the ridiculous grin spread across his face. He reached out a hand from his bed, and Rose grasped it tightly in hers. Pete backed out of the room, deciding to give them a few moments alone before they got into explanations. He walked down the corridor, shaking his head. His life must have been so dull before those two were around, with their fake marriages and near death experiences and adventures all over the flipping planet.

Back in the medical room, Rose looked over at the Doctor. "I think," she began slowly, "we should probably come up with some sort of back-up plan before we do anything like that ever again."

The Doctor smiled and nodded. "Possibly a tracking system. Either that or they could attach bells to our ankles and follow the sound." The words came slower than usual, but the feeling and humour that came with them had not changed in the slightest, and Rose relaxed a bit. Knowing that they were going to be OK was one thing, but actually talking to the Doctor and making sure he was still himself had reassured her enough to allow her to think clearly. She kept a tight grip on his hand even so.

They kept talking, saying stupid things that didn't really make sense, Rose egging the Doctor on so that she could hear his voice and keep remembering the fact that they were alive.

Tiredness overtook them before long, mumbled words trailing off into slow breathing as they both slipped into sleep.

They had been hugged and chastised and glared at enough to wear out the strongest human being, never mind two who had been almost dead a couple of days ago.

Her parents must've been so worried – maybe it was the lack of TARDIS and the mortality of the Doctor that caused Jackie to mind their recklessness more than she had in the other universe – and Rose knew they were only getting cross because they cared, but she wasn't enjoying herself. Still, even Rose had to admit that they had not come that close to dying in a long time.

So they nodded and understood and looked contrite and promised that they would try and be more careful, because they knew the Doctor didn't have a TARDIS or a sonic to bail them out with. Rose ended up hugging her mum and dad while crying, and the Doctor leaned against the wall, staring numbly at the ring that was still on his finger.

They were finally allowed to leave; with the proviso that they were not done discussing this and that the Doctor and Rose were not allowed to go gallivanting off anywhere for a little while. They agreed to this, the Doctor scuffing his shoes on the ground like a small child while Rose glared mutinously, not feeling particularly good about being ranted at like she was a teenager again.

Luckily, Jackie did not notice the little addition to their attire. They managed to get out to the car and drive home without mentioning the wedding rings – Pete kept quiet, for which they were both eternally grateful, though there were definitely a few pointed looks. The ring on Rose's finger glittered in the car headlights as she drove them back to their flat.

"It feels like a dream."

"What, like a nightmare?"

"No. Just a dream – like when you wake up and it all starts to blur and slip away from you a bit." Rose was sitting cross legged on the settee with a cup of tea that the Doctor had just brought her. He was still in the kitchen adding sugar to his mug, but he could sort of see her through the doorway and she could feel his eyes on her. What they had been through had been quite traumatic, and she was waiting to see whether they would talk it through or if the Doctor would just shut himself off and stick with silent worry and guilt. Experience would seem to suggest the latter, but she could never be sure with him. "I feel like I'm not quite sure what happened."

"I reckon that's the dehydration talking." The Doctor walked over and say down next to her on the sofa. Rose immediately snuggled in next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. She looked at their hands, both sets resting side by side holding mugs of hot tea. She didn't mean to get distracted by the rings but they kind of stole her focus. She did not even realise the Doctor was still speaking until he had stopped.

She looked up at him to see his face staring quizzically at her. "Sorry, got a bit distracted."

"I bet I know what by," he said, waggling the fingers of his left hand.

Rose sighed. "Exactly."

"You know that I meant everything I said that day?"

Rose looked at him and let out a breath that she was sure she hadn't even been holding. "Good. I was worried it was one of those 'oh god we're dying' things. Sort of panic driven and not thought through. I mean, I was desperately hoping it wasn't, but you never know."

The Doctor shifted a little in his seat. "Rose, you know I would never-"

"Doctor!" Rose held up a hand and stopped him mid sentence. "If there is one person I know of in the world that would be likely to wait up until death was imminent before finally confessing their innermost feelings, it would be you. Don't even try to deny it."

He rubbed the back of his neck in defeat. "OK, yes, that is definitely me. But like Pete said, it's a kick up the arse. If it's something we both really want then we just have to do it. Make the most of today and all that."

"You're sure it's something we both really want?" His face fell about a yard, and Rose cursed herself for managing to phrase that last question in the worst way possible. "No, I mean, I know that I want it, and you say you do too, but are you ready for that? You would never have even considered discussing this sort of thing before – I don't want you doing this just for me." She stared at him intently. They both understood that by 'before' she meant 'in the other universe' or possibly even 'when you were the other Doctor'. It was confusing, but she knew he got what she meant now.

The Doctor scrunched up his face, as though some sort of internal war were raging inside his mind. He finally opened his eyes and the confusion on his face cleared, leaving only an expression of purpose and urgency that she usually connected with the creation of some world-saving self-sacrificing strategy.

In the silence that followed Rose could hear the kitchen tap dripping in the other room.

"I want to be married to you," the Doctor blurted out finally. Rose just looked at him, eyes wide, and he continued to speak as though nothing on Earth could have stopped him baring his soul in that moment – she didn't want to interrupt him, this only happened once in a blue moon. "I want that day where everyone we know and love sees proof of how much we want to be together. I want to count the years we've been together and buy you ridiculous cards and presents and superfluous things made of paper or iron or whatever it happens to be that year. I want people to ask us how many years we've been married and for us to get confused and have to count. I want a wedding cake so tall that Tony will be itching to get his hands on it all evening. I want the wedding night. I want a honeymoon, not just another adventure, where we laze around and sit on the beach and have fantastic sex at all hours of the day. I want to wake up and fall asleep knowing that you wear the ring that I gave you on your finger, and that I will never take my ring off no matter what." He paused; the strength and duration of the speech seemed to have shocked him.

Rose allowed a smile to curl at the corners of her mouth. She hadn't dared to hope that this would be his reaction. "So you still want to do it then?"

He grinned, the widest he could manage, the sparkling brown eyes and Cheshire cat smile creating a feeling of warmth that was quickly spreading through Rose's veins and making her feel like she was floating.

"Oh yes."


End file.
